Ukraine1

Kyiv and Ukraine: 1564-1795

    The word 'ukraine' means 'borderland' in proto-Slavic languages. It turns up as early as 1187 in a Kyivan Chronicle, in the sense of 'borderland'; so where the population of one polity thinned out to uninhabited Steppe and fronted another polity, they could each refer to their borderland or their 'ukraine'. 

    However, by early 1600s maps were appearing with the capitalised proper noun Ukraine. Thus "Vkraina" and "Kyovia" turn up together on the Radziwill map of 1613.  In mid seventeenth century, Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan, a French cartographer working for the Polish army, published a map of "Ukrainska" in 1635 covering the area from the river Don in the east to the river Dniester in the west, and from Kyiv south to the Black (or Euxine) sea. His book Description d'Ukranie of 1651 was very widely read and republished in western Europe. 

Bohdan Khmelnytsky (1595 - 1657) 

(This section is the expansion of a paragraph in my post Kyiv3 it tells how, in an effort to free itself from Polish control, what we now think of as Ukraine passed into the control of Moscow.)

    Born c. 1595, Chigirin, Ukraine

    Died  1657, Chigirin. (Aug. 16, [New Style])

Khmelnytsky was the leader of the Zaporozhian Cossack  rebellion (1648–57) against Polish rule in Ukraine that ultimately led to the transfer of the Ukrainian lands east and south of the Dnieper River from Polish to Russian control. In summary: the revolt, with the taking of Kyiv and Lwów, was initially successful but, after repeatedly being let down by the Islamic Crimean Tartars, Khmelnytsky made a treaty with the Russians (1654).

Although Ukrainian born, Khmelnytsky had been educated in Poland and had served with Polish military forces against the Turks. He had become chief of a Cossacks regiment at Czyhryn (Poland), but quarreled with the Polish governor there and fled (December 1647) to the fortress of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, a semi-military community that had developed from runaway serfs, bandits, and traders who had settled along the Dnieper River (Zaporizhzhia="below the rapids"). There he organized a rebellion among the Zaporozhian Cossacks and, with the support of the (Islamic) Crimean Tatars, marched against the Poles in April 1648. His victorious advance into  Kyiv won him additional support from the dissatisfied peasants, townspeople, and clergy of Ukraine, who joined him in a mass uprising that enabled him to enter Poland proper and seize Lwów (now Lviv) in October 1648.

After winning more victories in 1649, Khmelnytsky made peace with the new Polish king, John Casimir, concluding the Compact of Zborów (Aug. 18, 1649); its terms permitted him to establish a virtually independent Cossack principality in Ukraine. 

That treaty, however, satisfied neither the Polish gentry nor Khmelnytsky’s followers. He therefore renewed the war in the spring of 1651 but was defeated at the Battle of Beresteczko in June 1651 and was compelled to accept a new, less advantageous, treaty. 

In the face of a growing threat from Poland and forsaken by his Tatar allies, Khmelnytsky asked the the tsar of Russia (Tsar Alexis) to incorporate Ukraine as an autonomous duchy under Russian protection. The Russians were reluctant to enter into such an agreement, and it was not until October 1653 that they approved the request and Tsar Alexis sent a delegation to the Cossacks.

Pereyaslav Agreement   Only after the Cossacks had suffered a further disastrous military defeat (December 1653) did they  receive the Muscovite delegation at Pereyaslav and formally submit to “the tsar’s hand.” Two months later (March 1654), the details of the union were negotiated in Moscow. The Cossacks were granted a large degree of autonomy (under a Cossack 'Hetman'), and they, as well as other social groups in Ukraine, retained all the rights and privileges they had enjoyed under Polish rule. But the unification of Ukraine with Russia was unacceptable to Poland. It launched the Russo-Polish war ("Thirteen Years’ War") which ended (1667, Truce of Andrusovo see below) with the division of Ukraine between Poland and Russia, along the Dniepro river, but with Kyiv allocated to Russia .  

Early in the Thirteen Years’ War, the Russians invaded Poland, but Khmelnytsky, not content with his pact with Alexis, entered into secret negotiations with Sweden, which was also at war with Poland. He was about to conclude a treaty with the Swedes, placing the Cossacks under Swedish rule, when he died (1657).

Khmelnytsky had sought autonomy for his Cossack followers but succeeded only in devastating their formerly flourishing Dnieper lands and in subjecting them to the rule of Moscow, which gained control of Ukraine east of the Dnieper and gradually curtailed their liberties, until in 1764, when Catherine II (the 'Great') of Russia abolished the 'Cossack Hetmanate'. (See my post Kyiv 4). 

The Truce of Andrusovo (1667) established a thirteen-and-a-half year truce, signed on 9 February [N.S.] 1667 between the Tsardom of Russia and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. That this war trailed on for 13.5 years shows that neither side was vastly more powerful. In 1610, Poland had invaded Russia, captured Moscow, and taken the Tsar (Vasili IV) back to Poland in a cage.  But this truce seems to have  tipped the balance from Poland to Russia.

[Based on several articles in Encyclopedia Britanica and Wikipedia]

How bad is social inequality?

  How Bad is Social Inequality?

       Paul Johnson (director of  the 'Institute for Fiscal Studies') gave a talk at Clare College, Cambridge, on Thursday 2nd May 2024, titled:

 "Inequalities: what they are, why they matter, and how to address them". 

I was disappointed. I did not think he showed at all clearly why inequalities are bad. And he provided few ideas on how to sort them. 

He presented many inequalities; of income, education, wealth, health, inheritance, ethnicity, gender, geography. And he showed correlations; the unhealthy are poor, and the poor are unhealthy. But he was neither curious nor analytical about the causes of these inequalities, and their correlations. He seemed to assume a mechanism – the usual suspects; poor people are badly educated, are sick, die young and live in the north. It seemed to me insufficiently analytic; more like journalism than academia. And he scarcely touched on remedies.

It is not self-evident to me that inequality itself is a 'bad thing'. Some inequality could be called variety. Some people are tall, some short, some fast, others slow, some numerate others literate. 

Some inequality may be by choice. Some people may choose to live on a croft on Raasay, keep a cow and fish for lobsters. Some seek paid work, others may choose to remain unemployed in the north east of England, preferring that life to any alternative that they can imagine. After all, I do not want to make money on the Stock Market, nor by flying planes, nor by cutting people open. We should beware of making choices for other people. 

We are not all born equal. Inequality is inevitable. It can often seem 'unfair', and that unfairness can be painful to contemplate. Our idealism feels let down. Some people feel we have an inherent right to two legs, etc.; and that society has a duty to level up. I do not. But we do have an opportunity to correct the oversights of providence. Inequality can be mitigated, but not abolished. 

What, then, is positively bad for society about this God-given inequality, and how far should we go to lessen it? Does inequality simply indicate a wrong, or does it actually cause damage? Does it indicate cruelty; or actively breed indifference; or lead to bad government?

I believe that great disparity of wealth is bad for society in two different ways. The existence of very poor people dehumanises us. Their poverty hurts and rebukes us, unless we look away.  The very rich can also offend by causing envy in the less fortunate, as man is susceptible to envy. But envy alone is not enough reason to dispossess the rich. 

We are beginning to see how the very rich can cause positive harm. They can be hard to control. They can corrupt. Money confers power in so many ways. We are careful to give each adult an equal vote, but pay little attention to the fact that some voters can deploy a thousand or a million times the resource of the average voter. We are governed by the rich, as well as guided; we buy their newspapers, and watch their television channels. 

In particular, excessive wealth provides excessive means of making more wealth. Without explicit limits, the situation is mathematically explosive. Most people will use most of their resource most of the time. A billionaire will not; his wealth does not trickle down, significantly, to his hairdresser, or butler; it is salted away for his heirs. An inheritance tax (like the feudal 'fee') is essential. Unspent wealth should revert to the state. This has been said many times before. 

At a more mundane level, we should look for action points? Perhaps identify a metric that would indicate where state interference with the free market could be beneficially applied – for example we could monitor 'the increase in GCSE grades per GB£ spent, on the grounds that a pound spent in Ashington, Northumberland, would yield more marginal benefit than a pound spent in Haslemere, Surrey. Perhaps implement a focussed improvement of the transport infrastructure, e.g. in areas remote from London?

I was hoping Paul Johnson would have thought himself into such territory. He must be well informed on all aspects of taxation, and could, I am sure, make a significant contribution. I hope he can be encouraged to do so.

Sincerely, Ian West

(See also my post of 12 Mar 2012 –– "Taxing the Wealthy")

The Failures of Macro-Economics

The Failures of Macro-Economics

    I wrote some 7 years ago about the Failures of Macro Economics (q.v.), concluding that both academic and journalist writers were insufficiently rigorous with themselves and each other; their words could be ignored; opinions in this quasi-science held more sway than data and rigorous logic.  

    Today, Timothy Taylor has raised a similar subject in his Conversable Economics blog. 

 

"When you listen to economists who have worked in or near government about their role in the mechanisms of policy-making, they are appropriately humble. They harbor (sic) few illusions that a quick lecture ....... will convert politicians to their point of view.  They are aware that political figures will grab an economic argument if it tends to support their pre-existing views, and ignore the argument otherwise."

     I immediately wonder if the power of the academic analysis is being correctly or incorrectly assessed by the politician. And if, in some cases, the politicians are ignoring sound advice, how can they be punished? It is often months, sometimes years, after policy steps are taken that their effects are known. 

     Taylor quoted George Stigler, who wryly wrote (1976) that:

"economists exert a minor and scarcely detectable influence on the societies in which they live."

    Taylor also quoted a perceptive and far reaching remark of Milton Friedman (1980): 

“The only person who can truly persuade you is yourself. You must turn the issues over in your mind at leisure, consider the many arguments, let them simmer, and after a long time turn your preferences into convictions.”    

     This, of course, is the academic; for the politician does not have the time, nor the right type of mind, to reflect in this way. He reacts to events with a knee-jerk response; afferents and efferents, but no frontal-lobe involvement. It may be necessary to lay before the politician the entire argument, right down to the calculated results on the GDP and the voters' response. 

    All, or a significant majority, of academic opinion must agree. Not that the majority is in all cases correct –– a point that my colleague Peter Mitchell enjoyed pointing out, after he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1978. 

    It may also be crucial that this entire argument be laid before the voters, for it to have significant effect on the political mind. The academic economist must 'raise his game'.

(See also: https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2014/06/keynes1.html )

Old-School

"Old-School Musicians in Merida"

    I was impressed by the almost Christ-like sacrifice represented by the career of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, the only governor of the state of Merida to learn, and speak, the Mayan language. He who, while still a young man, had been imprisoned for encouraging the native Mayans to break down fences erected by rapacious land-owners; fences that prevented the peasants from accessing their ancestral lands. He who, in 1922 at the age of 47, was elected overwhelmingly as governor of the state.

     Carrillo Puerto proclaimed the "first socialist government in the Americas". During his 20 months as governor he initiated land reform, confiscating large estates and returning land to the native Maya. He promoted new farming techniques, granted women political rights, began family planning programs, fought against alcoholism, and fought for the conservation and restoration of pre-Columbian Mayan archaeological sites. In the first year of his administration, 417 public schools were opened; and he founded the Universidad Nacional del Sureste.

      In early 1924 he, with 3 of his brothers and eight of his friends, was lined up and shot by political enemies. 

      My friend was trying to remember a love song said to have been written for Carillio Puerte when he fell in love with a young woman visitor from the United States. In 1922, the 33-year-old American  journalist Alma Reed (whose marriage to Reed had been annulled) was invited to Mexico by President Álvaro Obregón as an honoured guest. In February 1923, her party was welcomed to Yucatan by the strikingly handsome governor; described in her autobiography as "a man of exceptional magnetism and rare physical beauty. He was attired in a crisp white linen suit and, in his over six-foot height, towered head and shoulders above the assistants and petitioners who crowded around him". To a colleague who asked how she found him, she replied unhesitatingly «He's my idea of a Greek God!» The attraction seems to have been mutual. At the end of the year, Reed returned to the States to prepare for marriage, never to see Carrillo Puerto again. 

    The song addresses her as "La Peregrina” ('The Pilgrim'), by which name she is now immortalised. Composed, in the 4 verse Trova style, by Ricardo Palmerín (a Yucateco composer), to words by Luis Rosado Vega (a Yucateco poet); though not a great song, it was known by all and sung by many, even to this day.  

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e06PHapO6dc;  

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhrvspxq6N8;

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=420nOTLt92w&t=58s;

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw0CqmKi1Bg. 

     On Friday, at 7pm, we returned to the little plaza where, the previous night, we had heard the singing and dancing of La Serenata. No audience now, but three microphones on the stage; and one elderly guitarist in a severe black suit, like an undertaker's, who confessed to knowing the 100-year-old song. He said if we returned at 8pm he and his colleagues would open their ‘spot’ with “La Peregrina”.

     When we returned at 8, it turned out the owner of the bar had changed his mind and was going to ask a younger group to play. We were disappointed, as of course were the musicians. After a word with his colleagues, who had appeared from nowhere, they agreed to play the song, just for us. They lined up; leader in the middle, lead-guitarist on our right, he with the big fat acoustic  bass guitar on our left. And they sang the song; just for us. My friend gave the leader 200 pesos, though that hardly reflected our joy at hearing the song, acoustically, from three guitars and three singers who, between them would be carrying at least two hundred years of memories and tradition.

      There was a suggestion that the Gringo journalist was a US spy. But I think it would be wrong to doubt the honesty and good faith of Alma Reed; she spent many subsequent years in Mexico, and was a great supporter of the politically motivated muralist painter, Orozco.

     After hearing ‘our love song’ sung so beautifully and authentically, just for us, we made our short way back, past the patient horses and their gaily decorated fiacres, to our hotel. Long after midnight I could still hear the repetitive thumping and out-of-tune wailing from the youngsters and their loudspeakers in our little plaza. 

     Perhaps we should call in on the restaurant tomorrow and tell the owner how delighted we were to hear the ‘old school’ musicians singing a true Yucateca song without amplification in the square on Friday night.

PEREGRINA

(Ricardo Palmerín/Luis Rosado Vega)

Peregrina de ojos claros y divinos

y mejillas encendidas de arrebol,

mujercita de los labios purpurinos

y radiante cabellera como el sol.

Peregrina que dejaste tus lugares,

los abetos y la nieve y la nieve virginal

y veniste a refugiarte en mis palmares

bajo el cielo de mi tierra, de mi tierra tropical.

Las canoras avecillas de mis prados,

por cantarte dan sus trinos si te ven

y las flores de nectarios perfumados,

te acarician en los labios, en los labios y en la sien.

Cuando dejes mis palmeras y mi tierra,

Peregrina del semblante encantador:

No te olvides, no te olvides de mi tierra,

no te olvides, no te olvides de mi amor.

(For others of my posts about Mexico, put the keyword Mexico in the search box.)

Mad Cults & Minority Beliefs

 Mad Cults & Minority Beliefs.

I wonder how interested we should be in those murderous cults of the postwar era that led their devotees to commit mass suicide. It is such a bizarre extreme that interest seems somewhat ghoulish.  Dutch tulip-mania was odd. Christianity is odd, and in some forms very odd. But these cults strike me as impossible to understand.

I am thinking of the seventies cult of "the jungle poisoner", Jim Jones of Jonestown, and his "Peoples Temple" cult that culminated in 1978 with 'revolutionary suicide' in the Guyanan jungle. And of David Koresh's "Branch Davidian" cult that ended (in 1993) in the  Mount Carmel siege near Waco (Texas). The third example that comes to mind is less well known in the Anglophone world; it climaxed in French-speaking Switzerland in the nineties. I looked it up on Wikipedia  –– 'L' Ordre du Temple Solaire'. 

"The Order of the Solar Temple (French: Ordre du Temple solaire, OTS), or simply the Solar Temple, was a French-speaking religious group, often described as a cult, notorious for the mass deaths of many of its members in several mass murders and suicides throughout the 1990s. The OTS was a neo-Templar movement, claiming to be a continuation of the Knights Templar, and incorporated a mix of Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, and New Age ideas. It was led by Joseph Di Mambro, with Luc Jouret as a spokesman and second in command. It was founded in 1984, in Geneva, Switzerland."

It seems to me that these three murderous cults of the postwar era were each started by charismatic pranksters who were amused at their ability to hoodwink people, but who grew to believe their own nonsense, even to death. This Swiss cult was said to contain many "intelligent middle class adherents". (!)

Part of my interest comes from the realisation that essentially all religions are cults; it is hard to find a definition of a cult that does not include the Church of England. There may be a spectrum, running from Jim Jones on the one hand to the archbishop of Canterbury and the Quakers on the other. But Quakerism is undeniably a cult; its followers proudly and stubbornly following their charismatic (though long dead) leader. On that spectrum running from Jim Jones to George Fox there lies all the great religious names: Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Guru Nanak,......; men with magnetism, and a message that appeals.  

The number of adherents who follow a cult determines its social standing but that may depend on marketing as much as on appeal; think of Spanish thumb-screws and the 'Auto da Fé '. 

Popularity may relate less to the plausibility of the claims, than to their desirability, their ability to meet a human need. Some people crave status. But many people need a friend, and many need hope.  

I have remarked elsewhere [1] that the outstanding popularity of Christianity as a world religion may derive from the hope of life after death. After all, how plausible is 'life after death'? And how desireable? 

The Quaker cult seems to be 'odd man out' in that there seems to be essentially no claim. Followers are offered (a) friendship, and (b) the sense of doing the right thing. Nothing more (in the present century). That may be why the cult is dwindling. 

[1] https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2023/12/life-after-death.html

Los Tres Cojos

Los Tres Cojos 

Traffic moves slowly in Mexico City; more correctly I should say it move rapidly but with many pauses. The queues of stationary cars, at certain points on the Circuito interior, are so dependable that teams of nimble sales persons are poised ready to dash in amongst the cars with sweets, or drinks, or trinkets, or lottery tickets; especially at rush hours.

At traffic lights on major crossings, where the cycle-time allows, there are often entertainers poised ready to step into the space in front of the cars to perform for their captive audience.  On Avenida José Vasconcelos I have often seen children juggling with three balls and, after dark, young men juggling with flaming torches. Sometime you see tumblers or break-dancers. They have to move smartly when the lights change, but clearly know when their time is up.

Today I saw a unique display; three one-legged men on crutches playing with a  football. They kept their ball up with great skill using their three single legs, occasionally extending a crutch to stop the ball escaping into the traffic. 

The Spanish language has a special word for a one-legged man — un cojo. And, not surprisingly, also for a one-armed man — un manco. (Cervanres was one such, I am told.)  I teasingly asked about a man with only one eye, and was told “Yes, a one-eyed man is referred to as un tuerto.” What verbal richness! What nice distinctions become possible with a language so specific! Why are such words missing from the English Language? What is special about the Spanish – their legal system, perhaps?

But I am ashamed to note that I have already deserted the bizarre spectacle that moved me to write this note; my tres cojos at the crossroads in front of the Russian Embassy. 

(For others of my posts about Mexico, put the keyword Mexico in the search box.)

A Lesson for Eighty-year-olds

 A lesson for eighty-year-olds faced with lost keys and the collapse of a familiar way of life. 

The key-fob was missing and La Profesora could not get back into her office. She had only gone to the 'ladies', locking her office door behind her. The search, of every conceivable place, had delayed departure by half an hour, and the chauffeur needed to get home as his 10-year-old was coughing blood in hospital. 

All this led to a restless night of self recrimination, doom scenarios, and the listing of jobs for the morning with 'changing-the-locks' at the top. Finally sleep arrived.

Next morning the hair-dresser was due at 10am, but reported that the traffic in the city was 'blocked'. Further catastrophes loomed; what if she never arrived, nor the maid, nor the flowers! 

But with daylight, came a WhatsApp message from the profesora's faithful post-doc; the key-fob had been found; allegedly "in the waste-bin in the Ladies", with the used paper towels! Then, on the dot of 10:00, a buzz from the concierge announced the arrival of the hairdresser. 

The mind, now freed from its worries, could notice that the sun was shining, picking out the dazzling yellow jasmine on the house across the (abnormally empty) street. The tumbling world was back on its feet.